HOUSTON — James Dickey, one year into his tenure as head coach of the Houston Cougars, said hello to Sporting News near baggage claim at William P. Hobby Airport. It was almost as though he were on the greeting committee for the 2011 Final Four.

He actually was picking up some acquaintances, but it was nice to connect to something here that delivered a dose of Final Four spirit.

Visitors to this event will be so scattered across this vast metropolis we might never know we’re at a Final Four until the games begin.

And given who will be watching, that’ll feel a little odd, too.

So what have we learned through two dynamic weeks of NCAA Tournament competition? Some of what we’ve seen still feels a little mysterious, but this much is clear:

68 is enough. It is hard to believe following a season in which there was such rampant mediocrity among actual contenders for bids that anyone would try to revive the absurd case in favor of an expansion to a 96-team NCAA Tournament field.

Advocates are trying to use the success of VCU, one of the last teams in, to suggest others could pull off the same sort of run. Well, lots of others that were on the bubble and got in went home early, and some of those on the bubble that were left out managed to lose NIT home games.

Expansion to 96 would have disastrous effects on college basketball interest during the regular season. There has to be some incentive to invest in the games played from November to March.

ESPN was wrong. In the hours immediately after the Tournament selections were revealed, ESPN’s primary analysts set the agenda for the discussion of the how well the committee had done its job.

They did not get it wrong because they excoriated VCU’s inclusion and the Rams went on to play better basketball than anyone in the Tournament.

They got it wrong because they missed the story.

VCU’s case for inclusion was flimsy. So was UAB’s. However, they were at least as deserving as Colorado, Virginia Tech or anyone else excluded. All produced tremendously flawed regular seasons and would not have made any previous Tournament. It came down to a matter of taste, really. To invest such fury in teams that hadn’t earned their way in was a misapplication of the network’s power.

The story of how poorly the committee did its job was about seeding and bracketing.

It takes time to do a job well. Those who’ve participated in the NCAA’s mock bracketing exercise are surprised by much of what they learn, but only one element truly shocks: that the committee generally doesn’t begin the actual bracketing of selected teams until hours before the bracket is due.

We saw this year the effects of wasting excessive time on the selections when there was so little separating the suspect cases of back-of-the-field teams. The committee obviously rushed to stitch together the bracket, leading to gifted and accomplished North Carolina and Kentucky teams clogging the region of the supposed No. 1 overall seed, Ohio State.

It pays to be from a power conference. Once again, the best-performing mid-majors were drastically underseeded relative to their accomplishments.

Utah State ranked No. 15 in the RPI but was seeded only 12 in its region—a difference of eight seed lines from what that ranking would suggest. No. 20 Old Dominion was dropped four seed lines, No. 24 George Mason two lines.

Committee members can claim RPI doesn’t affect seeding, but the numbers show otherwise. Of the top 20 BCS teams in the RPI, eight were seeded precisely where their rank would indicate, nine were higher by one or two seeds and only Kentucky (two lines), Texas (one) and Georgetown (two) were demoted.

February isn’t special. VCU is all the proof one should need that a team’s performance over the last 10 games is of no consequence in determining whether it will achieve in the Tournament.

The Rams were 5-5 in their final 10 games. When the stretch run was an official component of the selection process, that figure quite likely would have been enough to get them excluded.

Of the Sweet 16, six had records of 7-3 or worse; UConn and Florida State were 6-4, and Marquette was 5-5.

It always has been ridiculous to suggest how teams perform at the end of the season matters more.

Champions handle pressure. If there’s one thing that connects the teams that excelled in the regular season but failed in the NCAAs, it’s how they performed under severe game pressure.

Did you see the look on the Kansas players when VCU started raining 3-pointers? Ohio State’s William Buford took shots against Kentucky he hadn’t tried all year—he regressed to his gunslinging, any-shot-of-mine-is-good sophomore season when Kentucky slapped on some serious perimeter D. And, of course, there was the incomprehensible foul committed by Pitt forward Nasir Robinson.

The physical difference between those teams and their opponents was not significant, if it existed at all. But through the year they executed, were highly efficient on both offense and defense.